Bluey: analysing and subtitling a preschool show.

Abstract

This paper is a subtitling project of the unaired episodes of the Australian animated children show Bluey, produced by the Australian company Ludo Studio and globally distributed by BBC Studios. Over the past two years this cartoon has faced a tremendous success all around the world both with the young audience and the adult viewership, being often praised for the likeability of its characters and the ability to convey both messages for children and for adults. The whole series is divided into 141 episodes of 7 minutes. The episodes follow the various adventures of Bluey, a 6-year-old blue heeler who lives in Brisbane with her family, composed by her 4-year-old sister Bingo, her dad Bandit and her mum Chilli. The main themes are the role of imaginative play in children’s upbringing and the supportive influence of their family, often accompanied by various life lessons and topics which apply both to children, such as avoiding to be a sore loser or never giving up when pursuing something, and to adults, such as coping with grief and not being able to have children. All episodes are set in a typical Australian environment which often stands out thanks to its diatopic elements and its cultural references. Since the case study is a cartoon mainly intended for pre-school children, the aforementioned elements could often be an issue when translating for such a young audience who is not familiar with Australian traditions, elements and words: this dissertation, after illustrating what audiovisual translation is and explaining different strategies translations based off of different models, is meant to propose an Italian subtitling translation of the unaired episodes of the third season, thus trying to create a profitable product for an audience who is, compared to the source viewership, virtually worlds apart.